


Legends of the Soulbound

by Le_Thomas_Bouric



Series: Legends of the Soulbound [1]
Category: Age of Sigmar, Warhammer Fantasy
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-23 13:41:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30056337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Le_Thomas_Bouric/pseuds/Le_Thomas_Bouric
Summary: The Soulbound; a group of powerful individuals who's actions could change the very fate of the Mortal Realms, for the better or the worse. But who were they before they joined this esteemed gathering? What were their stories? Here are just a few, tales drawn from their time before they joined or aided the Soulbound, even going as far back as before the Age of Sigmar began.
Series: Legends of the Soulbound [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2214078
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	1. The Grief of a Cathallar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aengellania Tearworn was an ancient Soulbound Scinari Cathallar even before the Age of Chaos began; some whisper that she was among the first to be inducted in those ranks. She has never substantiated those claims, instead focusing on supporting the mental and physical wellbeing of her Soulbound comrades. There are rumours that this devotion even extends to Soulbound that have already died, that she is secretly working to find a way to reverse the shattering of a Soulbound's spirit when they die.   
> Though nobody knows if this is the case, none can doubt the deep love Aengellania feels for her comrades, the joy that she experiences when she learns from them, and the loss she plummets into should they expire.

Aengellania Tearworn knelt by the cooling body of her friend, in the cold shadow of the deactivated Realmgate in Ghyran. The Branchwych still lived, but Aengellania’s witch-eyes could see her soul-stuff leaking from her lamentiri. It won’t be long before she was alone.

The Branchwych stirred, and feebly opened her eyes. They roved aimlessly around before settling on the Cathallar beside her.

“Is the gate closed?” she croaked.

Aengellania nodded.

“We shut the Realmgate in time, despite the efforts of the Blightkings. Azyr is protected from invasion.”

The Branchwych smiled and nodded weakly to herself. The smile disappeared quickly, replaced with worry.

“And the others?”

Aengellania bowed her head, shame burning inside of her. She forced the words out, scourging herself with guilt as she did so.

“They... they’re dead. We’re the last ones of the Binding, Ylthe.”

As she spoke she stroked the Sylvaneth’s head with glowing fingers, willing the healing magic of Hysh to repair her friend’s wounds. But the magic was not strong enough, not now, and the great rents torn in Ylthe’s body were too many. Too great. Too... too...

As if reading her mind, the Branchwych gently laid a branch on Aengellania’s hand, stilling it and bringing it closer to her cheek. Ylthe held it in place and squeezed, letting the Soulfire they shared speak where grief and loss made words fail. After a while that did not feel like long enough Ylthe spoke, as more tattered wisps of her soul floated out of her mouth.

“Aengellania... You need to leave. Run. Chaos will come creeping back, and if it finds you here it will kill you. You did all you could to... save us. Don’t throw away your life over imagined fai- failure-“

Her stoicism failed, and for a brief moment the agony she felt was writ plain on Ylthe’s features. Aengellania leaned forward and clasped her tight, trying her best to hold back her own tears. She wished nothing more than to take a sphere of aqua ghyranis and douse the Branchwych with it; but they had run out of it what felt like years ago, fighting their way to the Realmgate.

Eventually Ylthe’s pain receded enough for lucidity to return, and Aengellania lay her down on the blood-soaked ground. Ylthe’s heartwood visible beneath her torn bark began to fade in lustre, and at the sight of such an obvious death-sign among Sylvaneth Aengellania could no longer contain her grief. Her next words spoken in a cracked voice were a cliché that would have been laughed out of any self-respecting Lumineth publishing house, but at this moment it was all she could think of.

“It- it shouldn’t have ended like this. Not like this.”

The Branchwych stirred slightly, and opened up her eyes again a fraction. She smiled weakly, belying the fierce love that Aengellania could feel in her soul.

“End? Ae-Aenge... It never ends. Life... never ends. Sum-summer always... returns...”

Finally, her eyelids shut and her head lolled back, and after a split-second of pressure a torrent of ghostly light shot out of Ylthe's body. Aengellania watched it with watering eyes as it speared into the sky and split apart into streams of soul-stuff, arcing gently down and intertwining with the realm itself. Where it fell the plants seemed to stand a little taller, and the corruption of Nurgle seemed to be chased away. She hoped that was the case.

 _Ylthe would have wanted to become a part of Ghyran_ , some quiet part of Aengellania thought. Then that small comfort was smothered beneath her sorrow. For once she did not immediately heed her friend’s advice, but instead bent over her corpse and sobbed freely, letting the emotions that would ordinarily be whisked away with a palmful of Aetherquartz run rampant in the open.

When the Maggotkin would return to the clearing they would only find the bodies of the slain; those that lingered there might have felt, at the edges of their awareness, the grief of a Cathallar.


	2. The Duty of a Knight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aeméline, an Errant-Questor of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer, is on a quest to rediscover her ancient past after a freak encounter with an army of the Flesheater Court that left her with bizarre yet familiar memories. Though her mortal identity has been nearly stripped away by multiple Reforgings, this connection could be a chance to uncover her people's culture and her own history, and stave off the looming threat of devolving into a lightning-gheist. Only if she survives, as her dedication towards protecting others and her functional immortality has given Améline something of a martyr complex...

Sitting on a dusty rock, running a tattered rag over her greatsword, Errant-Questor Améline cleaned her blade of the blood of the ghouls that lay scattered around her. Her eyes glowed erratically with lightning as sparks jumped off her fingers onto her weapon. If this caused her discomfort, she did not show it. Among those that knew her well, this was a sure sign that she was in a foul temper.

It had been a bad fight; not that the now-dismembered monsters had really stood a chance, but that afterwards she’d come no closer to uncovering their connection to her past. Instead she was left with half-memories of a maddeningly distant chivalric history, uncomfortably blended with the ghouls’ unfettered charnel appetites; it left a bad taste in her mouth. Worse, the fight had delayed her from meeting the Soulbound that Sigmar had tasked her to protect. Though she was sure that she still had enough time to spare if she hurried, purposefully delaying herself for little-to-no visible result sat ill with her. And if she arrived behind schedule, they might start asking questions; Améline was not known to be late without good cause. She wanted only Sigmar to know of her secret geas.

Améline’s eyes blazed violently as she stood up, considering the corpses of the ghouls and the leftovers of the kills they had previously made. Her gaze swept over the crude paintings and faded remnants of banners patched together with skin adorning the crumbling stone walls of the dilapidated castle. It was evil enough that they preyed on innocent travellers, but to steal her people’s culture for their own... That was a personal slap to her face. An insult. A dishonour.

She hated the ghouls for that, above all else. That they were the last link between her and her ancient people was both a curse and a blessing; though she had to actively seek them out, it also meant that she got to kill them afterwards. After fighting in the battleline as a Retributor, smashing apart great beasts with her lightning hammer or being torn apart by their claws, fighting ghouls had proven to be easier than she had expected, though uglier too. Her stomach still roiled as she considered the flesh heaps where the ghouls stacked up their spoils.

She stopped on the largest of the ghouls as she made her exit, an abominably huge creature that only deigned to rise from its throne when she had first disposed of its minions. As if mocking the duelling traditions held in trust between knights. It was wearing a large, red cloak that had caught her eye. A filthy and ragged thing, but otherwise untouched by the ghoul’s taint. Améline knelt down, and gingerly removed the mantle from the corpse. When she saw the symbol embroidered on its back, the celestial energy in her eyes died down, until the grey of her irises could be seen in the recesses of her helm.

It was a golden fleur-de-lys. It felt... familiar. A possible clue from her mortal past. Another barrier between her and becoming a lightning-gheist.

Perhaps her visions hadn't been false after all.

She gently rolled up the cloak, and placed it in her pack with a delicacy that was belied by her bulk. She swung the pack to her shoulders, sheathed her greatsword, and set off once again with long strides back on the road that she had deviated from. She’d stop by a tailor to repair the cloak when she arrived in Azyrheim. Améline had a duty to Sigmar, and she had tarried long enough.


	3. The Family of a Lost Leaf

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Laithera, soon to acquire the sobriquet The Lost Leaf, is a nomadic sylvaneth even by the standards of her fellows, as well as quite mad. Though she calls no clan her progeniture, she is quick to adopt any clan as family, sylvaneth or other, that lets her stay with them. These arrangements rarely last long, as quickly she is driven away for her acts of sadistic and indiscriminate violence against anyone she felt threatened her newfound family, though she never holds a grudge against them. Were she to join the Soulbound, Laithera would become a wellspring of care for the Binding, and a hurricane of rage for their enemies.

_In the razed home of a clan, in the burned remnants of soulpods and lamentiri, a spark of life ignited..._

A wooden claw tore out of the earth, scrabbling for the air. Something scrambled out from the ash-painted ground. It revealed its form as lithe and bark-skinned, with new green leaves for hair and yellow eyes. Unperturbed by her burial in the earth, she cast her eyes around at the carnage strewn about it.

She felt like she should feel sadness. And in a way she did, in a dull, hollow part of herself. But she did not know what the burning trees were, or what they meant to her. Some of them were shaped like her. Was that a clue?

She stumbled on, limbs shaking less with every step she took. It took her some time to familiarise herself with her body. After all, she had just been born a few minutes ago.

She stopped next to a pile of ash, interspersed with fragments of charred wood. Next to it lay _fell, a voice whispered_ a long branch of wood, topped with a circular curved blade.

 _Pick it up_ , the voice spoke again.

The voice sounded foreign to her, but in a strange way also familiar. Like someone that was her, but also not her. She heeded it, and picked up the scythe. Once again she felt the odd feeling of familiarity and strangeness; she had never before seen such an implement, but her hand gripped it naturally, and as she held it she felt an innate knowledge of how to use it. She gave it an experimental swing; it felt perfectly natural to her.

She wandered some more, and eventually came upon another thing laying on the ground. It looked out a bit like her, but stuck out a lot from her surroundings; instead of feet it had strange curved solid pads, with dark tiny leaves clinging to it all the way up to its waist. Above the waist there was a strange, smooth covering that did not look or feel like bark. On top of that it had another layer, this time of a shining cold substance that had brown splotches on it. Its head had more of the brown leaves, but they were longer. Two branches jutted out of either side of its head, but they seemed more solid and less pliable.

Upon seeing the creature hatred began to well up inside of her. She looked at the tool it still clutched, and memories welled up of it cutting down the trees that looked like her. Words were whispered in her mind in a multitude of voices, but many of those voices spoke one word;

 _Enemy_.

She swung her scythe, hacking off the head of the thing with a few blows to the neck, but she somehow felt unsatisfied. She wanted to do that some more, and with living enemies.

She decided that she wouldn’t find more of these enemies here, and so left the grove searching for them. She didn’t know exactly where they were, but the voices told her that some of them would be nearby. She hoped that was the case.

She stalked through the forest, the voices still ringing in her head. She learned more about the world around her; not many precise names, but the feelings attached to them. Protect family. Tend to Ghyran. Kill enemies. She wasn’t sure how to accomplish those first two by herself, but she was certain that she could fulfil the last one by herself.

Finally, she heard noises ahead of her. Grunting, and whimpering. She moved forwards quietly, hoping it was something she could hurt.

She saw two more of the _Beastmen, Gors,_ that appeared to have cornered something small and fleshy in a tree. They pawed at the ground with their hooves and snarled laughter at it. In return it cried and called for... something. She did not understand its language just yet.

Letting a growl rattle up her throat, she began to instinctively marshal life magic around her, despite not knowing what it was. With a sharp flick of her wrist, she sent barbed roots out of the ground and tear through the two gors. One of them died instantly, throat and skull punctured as if they had been moss. The other had its abdomen torn open and its limbs pinned to the ground, but from its panicked bleating she suspected that it was still alive. She also found that she liked the noises it made like this.

Finally she shrieked a keening cry of hatred, and sprinted out of her hiding place to tear at the fallen gor, with scythe and at times her bare claws. The sprayed gore excited her, and sent the voices in a frenzy; they screamed for more, and she was happy to give it to them.

Finally the screaming died away, and she turned her attention to the small creature that the beastmen had hunted. It seemed different from them, both physically and inwardly. Though it was made of flesh like them, it did not seem as foul, and the crying it emitted did not make her sap surge quite like the cries of the gor did. Instead, it made her want to... want to...

_Kill it. Spill its blood on the ground to feed the earth. It will never be enough to make up what they took from you._

Acting on instinct once again, she snarled and raised her hand, preparing to command the tree to surrender the _human, it’s a human_ from its branches.

And then, she heard another voice. It was... different, from the others. It was quiet, but somehow drowned out the shouting of the rest. There was no tinge of unfamiliarity to it, like she had always known the speaker.

 _Spare him_ , it said. _He does not deserve to die. He is not clan, but it is a start._

Once again she looked at the creature, and instead saw the person. It was just a young scared human boy that thought he was about to die. Why did he need to die? For the first time, she tried to speak.

“What... what is you called?”

This seemed to surprise the boy, but also calm him down. She wasn’t sure. This was the first time she had seen a face.

“I- I’m called Alda. Alda Lindern.”

Alda Lindern. She rolled the name around in her head. That did not seem like the name of someone that should die.

“Alda. Lindern. Promise, you won’t die. You have grove to be safe in?”

The boy quieted down, and hesitantly lowered himself down the tree.

“I have a village, not far from here. I was harvesting Dawnspice with my family when the monsters attacked.”

Once again, she unconsciously let out a small growling noise. So the beastmen were also attacking them too?

“I also promise. I protect your grove. I stay. I help. Promise on... Promise on Alarielle.”

The name came suddenly, unbidden. But it was as if she had always known it. Perhaps she had always known it, but needed the boy to bring it out. She thought so, because for the first time she felt an unseen pair of eyes watching her when she spoke the name aloud. It was an oddly comforting feeling. For his part the boy seemed reassured by her promise. Perhaps he also knew Alarielle.

He clambered down the tree quickly, and was soon standing next to her. He looked like he was about to lead her to his grove, but stopped, unsure.

“We’ve had bad times at our village. I don’t think the others will let another hungry mouth live there with them.”

He looked up at her with nervous unsure eyes.

“Do you eat?”

A rumble came unbidden from her mouth. She thought it was laughter.

“No eat. No eat like humans. But...”

She raised her hand again, and bid a nearby tree to flourish. It suddenly bloomed with life, large fat apples dangling off of its branches in the blink of an eye. One was so heavy it fell out of the tree and straight into her outstretched hand. She handed it to the wide-eyed Alda with what she thought was a smile.

“I stay. I help. And called... Laithera.”

As she walked behind Alda, who was messily devouring the apple as if it was the first good food he had eaten in a while, Laithera wondered why that quiet voice that told her to spare him sounded exactly like her own spoken voice. Perhaps if she ever met Alarielle she would ask her.


	4. The Companion of a Murderer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Khaic Ki'in, a killer devoted to Khaine and Witch Aelf talented in assassination and manipulating the magic of Ulgu, would become a powerful weapon for the Soulbound and a reassuring shadow. Despite this she was never openly close to any of her comrades, and preferred to spend her free time alone away from even the few friends she had made. Such a character does not last long in the tiger-eat-tiger world of Khainite politics, at least not without a powerful ally.

Hag Queen Selendra Shadowjoy eyed the back-bent leathanam with malicious intent as he carried his loathsome burden into her chamber. She was of half a mind to slit his throat right there and then, but he deposited the object of her hate on her desk and scurried out of the room before she decided to draw her knife. Instead Selendra directed her gaze at the large stack of papers in front of her.

Paperwork. Damn, Khaine-forsaken bloodless paperwork. Selendra’s predecessor had never mentioned it ( _not that the impious cretin really had the time to before Khaic’s dagger punctured her throat_ , she mused), but had she known that this onerous duty lay before her Selendra would have been tempted to refuse High Oracle Morathi’s appointment to lead the Occluded Hearts Coven of the Khailebron. Politely, of course.

The Hag Queen up her quill, instead of drawing her weapons and perpetrating a bloody massacre as she desperately wanted to, and began tearing through the forms that prevented her coven from devolving into a blood-crazed troupe of murderers; at least, too much so for their allies to stomach. As hateful as it was, it was necessary work, and Selendra had suffered from the mismanagement of her predecessor for too long to ignore it.

She had just finished signing the forms granting the Occluded Hearts a healthy sum of aqua ghyranis for performing in the Red Hand, when she heard the slightest creaking of wood. To anyone without the finely honed paranoia of a Daughter of Khaine it would have just been any other sound, but she had earned her position by orchestrating the murder of her predecessor; she knew not to take chances.

Silently sliding her knife from its sheaf, Selendra waited for a few seconds, long enough for any assailant to think she hadn’t noticed the noise, before leaping out of her chair onto the table with a snarl. Her landing threw papers into the air, partially obscuring her form as she spun around and prepared to throw the knife into the heart of whoever was unlucky enough to be caught infiltrating one of the wandering shrines of the Khailebron.

The figure was already pulling itself up from her window to the beams of the ceiling; they were hidden in the shadows by their dark-tinted clothing and a hint of Ulgu magic that she could detect misted around them. They were completely covered in cloth, leather and small armour plates placed above the vital areas of the body, tightly wrapping around their body to prevent snags, but loose enough to provide fluidity of motion. Though unarmed they had a wide arrange of daggers and vials on their person, and Selendra could see a reflexive tightening of shadow magic in their hands as they prepared to cast a spell.

The clothes themselves were cut in an odd style; though seemingly purely functional, to a trained eye there was a slight motif, a pattern to it that was both familiar yet unrecognisable. If, of course, one wasn’t a Daughter of Khaine.

Selendra absorbed all this information in the time it would have taken blood to spill from a slit neck, and relaxed. The intruder was wearing the costume of a _Draihain_ , worn by performing Witch Aelves that stalked the arena clandestinely finishing off gladiators too wounded to continue fighting without distracting the spectators. She only knew of one person that wore a version of it, modified for murder.

“Khaic Ki’in, you don’t have to come back to me directly after you’ve executed your charge.”

The intruder dropped to the ground like a cat, stood up straight and puller back her hood, revealing an aelf with a thin pale face and a ghost of a smile. She remembered one of the Witch Aelves joking that Khaic had murdered that smile, only for it to have come back to haunt her. Selendra idly tried to recall where she had buried that Witch Aelf’s body.

The assassin before her shrugged, and spoke in a voice more used to whispering;

“I prefer not to be seen by the others. You know that.”

“Nonetheless, if someone was following you, you could have incriminated our coven, or even me. Worse, you might have made me to hurt you.”

Again Khaic shrugged, and Selendra knew this was a pointless argument. In character with the shaded Realm of her birth, the young Witch Aelf hated the company of strangers, and strove for isolation in much the same way that Duardin lusted for gold. She chose to sit back at her chair and change the conversation.

“I assume the target is dead?”

Khaic opened up her pack and removed from it a bloodstained mask that mimicked the head of a bird. She handed it to Selendra; the gore still wet enough to drip on the scattered papers on the desk.

“Him and the rest of his cult in Brightspear. As you told me to I left enough clues for the Celestial Warbringers to eventually uncover their meeting place, and if the Lord-Arcanum is bright enough she’ll realise that the deaths were dedicated to Khaine’s bloody hand, may He return to us.”

Selendra nodded. With any luck the Lord-Arcanum Salonia Gravenwing suspect the Occluded Heart of committing the massacre against the Tzeentchian cell, and while it wouldn’t put them in her good graces it would at least mark them out as useful to her. Selendra liked being useful to her allies. After all, Khaine and Sigmar shared a hatred of Chaos, and the Daughters of Khaine and Order both depended on each other for survival. It also didn’t hurt that being trusted also made it far easier to collect funds for staging performance-battles, and clandestinely collect sacrifices for the Blood Cauldron.

“Excellent work. Khaine will be pleased by the bountiful harvest, and the High Oracle would appro-“

But Khaic wasn’t listening; instead, while Selendra’s back was turned she had gotten onto the desk and was crouching over the spatter of blood, staring intently at it. Slowly, gently, she put her left forefinger into a drop, and began to draw unintelligible Druhir runes with unbreakable concentration.

Selendra had seen this sight too many times to be surprised by it, but it still sent chills up her spine. As a Hag Queen she knew of the power inherent in blood spilt in violence; she owed her continued youth to the Cauldron of Blood. But she had never encountered a Daughter of Khaine that blood _talked_ to. Or at least, pretended to think so.

Suddenly, with an abruptness that made Selendra tense, the Witch Aelf’s hand shot out, grabbing a letter on the desk. She looked like she was about to tear it open, when she seemed to remember who it belonged to and instead offered it to her superior with a contrite look.

“My apologies, Hag Queen. The runes said that this was important.”

Selendra took it without demanding further explanation; faked or not, Khaic’s runes possessed some wisdom within them, as... heretical, as the implication was; Khaine did not speak to His daughters save the High Oracle, or so Morathi claimed. Khaic’s gift, if it was that, was a closely kept secret for Selendra. She owed too much to the Witch Aelf to do otherwise.

She cut the seal on the letter and unfolded it to reveal a blank page, save for a mark shaped like a gauntlet clutching a heart. A quick application of her blood and Shadow magic later and the writing revealed itself.

She did not speak for a long while. Instead she reread the letter, and did so again until she had finished reading it for the fourth time. She looked up at Khaic, and let her worry show.

“The Shadow Queen herself has commanded me to send one of my number to Azyrheim alongside a Melusai escort, a Witch Aelf of considerable talent for bloodshed and the sorcery of Ulgu. To join the ranks of an unnamed group of individuals taken from all facets of Order to combat Chaos. Someone who could ‘keep Khaine close to their heart, and read His words in the blood she spills even when permanently separated from her Sisters’. Khaic, she’s practically calling for your banishment without speaking your name.”

She offered up the letter to Khaic as proof, but she didn’t take it. In fact, she didn’t seem surprised at all. Selendra shot her an accusing look.

“I suppose the runes had already told you of this.”

Khaic nodded.

“When I slaughtered the Magister.”

Selendra slumped a little in her chair.

“I can’t dare ignore these demands. If I had a little more time to sway the loyalty of the coven to me, plan the execution of the Melusai, establish contacts with allies to shelter us, maybe I could have. But not now.”

Khaic moved around the table and placed a companionable hand on her mistresses’ shoulder. Such familiarity might have been the death sentence for the Witch Aelf had they been anyone else.

“So don’t. I will gladly go to Azyrheim and whatever fate awaits me there, to protect you and my other sisters. The runes-”

“Have spoken.” Selendra finished. “But without your magic and daggers keeping power in this coven will become much more difficult. I need my... my...”

_Protégé? Sister? Friend?_ The latter word, so alien to her kind, spun in her head, but she couldn’t dare say it aloud. Not even after the decades they’d spent together.

“...Assassin.” she said instead lamely. “There’s no one else I trust more than you.”

She read the letter again, focusing on a particular phrase.

“’Permanently separated from her Sisters’. We might never see each other again.”

The murderer didn’t speak immediately, instead staring up at the ceiling as she ruminated on her answer. Finally, she looked down at Selendra.

“Do you remember how you found me, all those days ago?”

“In the streets of Misthåvn, just outside...”

_The Arena of Accumulated Shades. While the crowd chanted the names of fallen or victorious gladiators, two young Witch Aelves stalked their prey through the shadows, a slippery silhouette that snuck into the arena amongst the spectators. Finally they cornered it in an abandoned hovel, more likely to collapse and kill the occupant than give them shelter._

_One of them stood atop the corpse of the other, studying her bloody blade with a kind of detached shock. She wasn’t sure why quite she’d killed her companion when her back was turned, about to stab the erstwhile victim; it wasn’t like she disliked her that much._

_Her former prey, a young pale starving aelf girl with the scent of Ulgu clinging to her, didn’t scream. Instead of running she knelt by the rapidly expanding pool of blood and in a mad panic thrust her hands into it. She stood up, and began frantically drawing on the walls and floors of the building. As the Witch Aelf’s eyes acclimatised to the gloom she saw that the aelf seemed to be drawing crude Khainite symbols, signs that should be alien to a street urchin. She looked around, and saw that from brown stains encrusting every available surface that this wasn’t the first time the girl had done this._

_Finally letting out a howl of animalistic suffering, the girl ripped herself away from her work and flung herself at the Witch Aelf, fingers scrabbling against her leg._

_“What do they mean?” she screamed. “What do they want from me?”_

_That Witch Aelf didn’t know, would never know. Though she was already calculating the opportunity her bloody-handed master had just given her, in that single moment, looking into the eyes of someone balanced on the edge of madness, she felt... pity._

“I’ll never forget that moment.”

Khaic nodded, also remembering that moment, though most likely differently.

“You saved my life. You took me into the Coven, and you gave me weapons. You taught me the language that let the runes speak to me, and you illuminated me to the Bloody Hand of Khaine, God of Murder. You gave me purpose. You gave me life. Whatever the High Oracle does to us, she can never take away those years. If Khaine intends different paths for the both of us, then so be it.”

Her words were meant to be comforting, but Selendra didn’t find them reassuring. Instead she was dwelling on how much their bond had carried her up through the hierarchy of the Occluded Hearts, with Khaic as her right-hand woman. It had been nothing short of meteoric, as none of the other Daughters were privileged with a devout _friend_ follower like Khaic. And now the High Oracle was going to sever that bond.

_Would that all Daughters of Khaine could be so loyal to one another as we are, instead of needlessly politicking_ , she thought bitterly to herself. _Perhaps the Great Enemy would have been eradicated by now._

Then, a thought so heretical that it sent frissons down her spine occurred to her. She realised that it wasn't a new one to her, but only now did she have the courage to even think it.

_Unless Morathi was afraid of such a powerful alliance..._

She turned, preparing herself to order the Witch Aelf to stay, but instead found only empty air where Khaic once stood. The window was wide open, and in the distance Selendra could see a dark outline disappear through the mists of Anvilguard.

Selendra snarled, and prepared herself to chase after the fugitive aelf. No matter how talented she was, Khaic could not hope to match Selendra’s experience. It would be a quick pursuit.

Just as she was about to leap out of the window, something wafted down from the ceiling. Selendra snatched it in mid-air, and was about to look up when she realised with shock just exactly what was in her hand.

It was three strands of her hair, bound together with a fourth. She felt a presence hiding among the beams, or perhaps it had revealed itself to her.

A voice breathed down from above;

“The High Oracle, font of Khaine’s blessings, demands you let the heretic go. Should you choose not to heed her wishes examples will be made, ending with you.”

After a few minutes Selendra dared to look up. She saw only the wood ceiling of her chamber, and the shadows clinging to it. Somehow that didn’t make her feel any safer.

With agonising slowness, the Hag Queen lowered herself onto her chair, silently cursing herself as a coward and a traitor. She returned to the paperwork and tried to channel her hate into it, but by the time she was done she still had too much pent up rage inside of her. She might very well have to exsanguinate her leathanam attendant.

Morathi didn’t know what kind of enemy she had made today. But one day, Selendra Shadowjoy promised herself, she would find out.


End file.
